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Systems Thinking for Social Change D. Stroh (Leap Words (Leverage points,…
Systems Thinking for Social Change D. Stroh
READING GOAL
Banes
Find key fundamental ideas of systems thinking that can be applied to CSC-EH interface
SCIE
Questions for outcome reading
Banes
How can perceptions of roles / contributions to the system be challenged?
How can stories be used in EH?
How can capacity be created wher there is resistance due to being busy?
How can negative feedback loops be counteracted?
SCIE
Leap Words
Leverage points
Closing the loop
Systemic theories of change
Mental Models
Collaorative capacity
Preliminary systems analysis
Catalyst for Social Change
Systems stories
Managing complexity
Good intentions not enough
Collective impact
Chronic, complex problems
Storytelling for social change
Understanding deeper system structure
Defining variables
System equilibrium
Resistance to change
Deciphering the plots of the system stories
Amplification
Shifting the burden
Limits to growth
Accidental adversaries
Building collaborative capacity
Balance simplicity & complexity
Surface mental models
Catalytic conversations
Rewire Cause-Effect
Consequences along multiple dimensions
Tracking success amplification
Systems orientation
Mental
Emotional
Ask systemic questions
Multiple Archetype diagrams
Amplification
Attractors
Catalyse explicit choice between the purpose people say they want to accomplish and the benefits hey are achieving right now
Help make conscious choice between payoffs now getting and the espoused purpose they say they want to accomplish. This involves deepening people's connections with what they care about most and supporting them to let go or current payoffs that do not serve their highest purpose
System thinking works because:
Increases awareness of how you might be unwittingly contributing to the problems you want to solve
Empowers you to begin from where you can have greatest impact on others, by reflecting on and shifting your own intentions and actions
Mobilises diverse stakeholders to take actions that increase the effectiveness of the whole system over time instead of meeting their own self-interests
Helps you & others anticipate and avoid longer-term consequences of well-intentioned solutions
Identifies high-leverage interventions that focus limited resources for maximum, lasting, system-wide improvement
Motivates and supports continuous learning
Increase effectiveness
Uncover root causes of chronic, complex problems
Identify high-leverage interventions
Strengthen commitment to invest for long-term and ability to evaluate impact over time
4 Stage Change management process
1) Build a foundation for change & affirm readiness for change
2) Seeing current reality more clearly
3) Make an explicit choice about what is most important
4) Bridging gap between people's aspirations and current state
4-stage change process
Based on "CREATIVE TENSION" in Fifth Discipline
Energy for change is mobilised by establishing discrepancy between what people want and where they are
If people have clear vision of what they want and are candidly clear about where they are then the tension will resolve in favour of what they want
Common aspiration
Shared understanding of where are & why
Shared picture of the deeper reality
Stakeholders experience their responsibility for the whole system instead of just their role
State of alignment where people freely commit
System Archetypes
Virtuous / Vicious Cycles
Amplification & reinforcement producing success or disaster
Produce exponential growth (rather than expected linear growth)
Balancing Process
Corrections to reduce the gap
Bridge gap between actual and desired performance
Fixes that backfire
Unintended consequences
Long term negative consequences of a quick fix
Shifting the burden
Unintended dependency
Quick fix we become addicted to
Limits to growth
Unanticipated constraints
Limiting mechanism on limiting growth
Success to the successful
Winner takes all
Your success produces my failure
Accidental Adversaries
Partners who become enemies
Want to cooperate but each undermines the others success
Drifting Goals
Inadvertent poor performance
Actual & desired performance levels gradually fall
Competing goals
Conflicting or multiple commitments
Trying to satisfy conflicting goals, or too many, can lead to accomplishing none
Escalation
Unintended proliferation
Harder you push, the harder competitor pushes back
Tragedy of the commons
Optimising each part destroys the whole
Everyone takes advantage of a resource that doesn't belong to anybody
Growth/ Underinvestment
Self-created limits
Push on growth side and under-invest in capacity to grow
Bathtub analogy
Throughput not just input
Concept of flow
Level of water in a bathtub is governed by relative flows in and out
If you want to change the overall level in the bathtub, you need to change the relative rates of flow in & out
Delays in complex systems. Time between...
Time between...
Awareness that condition has changed & our decision to act
The decision to act & act of implementation
Implementation & corresponding change in condition
Change in condition & our awareness that condition has changed
Plots of Systems Stories
Going round in circles
Increasing Self-awareness is an intervention of itself and the precursor to making any other changes
Balance Simplicity & Complexity
Challenge of systems analysis be simple enough to to understood, yet compels enough to capture richness of diverse perspectives and experiences
How to achieve this balance?
One archetype - No additional loops
One archetype - Additional loops all enriching the same story
Multiple archetypes - Often using more than one diagram
Bathtub - Either on its own or in combination with one or more archetypes
Interdependence mapping
Computer modelling & simulation
Useful when more complex, need to validate systems map, test policy alternatives, paint diff scenarios & quantify outcomes
Most accessible methods
Interdependence Mapping
Consider:
Whose work in this system supports our own?
What current relationships would be helpful for us to improve?
What new relationships would be helpful for us to develop?
Whose work in this system do we support?
Stakeholders place respective organisations on the map
List many factors affecting an issue, draw relevant connections
Bath Tub analogy
Systems mapping shows big picture, engages, stimulate productive conversations about the issue
New conversations increase collaboration by illuminating critical factors such as personal responsibility, interdependence, time delays, difference long & short term impacts, unintended consequences, local vs system optimisation
Mental Models
Systems thinking makes our hunches explicit
Slowing down thinking long enough to reflect on whether it serves us
Our assumptions & beliefs drive many of the cause & effect relationships
Looking at causal loop diagram ask - What are the key assumptions that keep this dynamic is place?
Locate each mental model on a specific cause-effect link & identify which stakeholders hold that particular belief
Can be illuminating to go beyond space limitations & describe in greater detail how each different stakeholder sees the problem
Different lenses or paradigms
Create catalytic conversations
Instead of re-creating familiar discussion about limited resources, who is to blame, etc these conversations are designed to deepen awareness, cultivate acceptance & develop new alternatives
Deepening awareness
Surface unquestioned assumptions
Promote inquiry
Cultivating acceptance
Move from blame to responsibility, independence to interdependence, short-term to long-term thinking
Need compassion to recognise many problems are self-created
Enable people to achieve more of what they care about
Confront without contempt
eg Martin Luther King
Understand conditions for success vs purpose
Developing new alternatives
Willingness & ability to develop alternatives are founded on awareness and acceptance
Consider people's underlying intentions
Supporting people to align their actions with their highest aspirations
Making an explicit choice
Developing common ground is vital, even deeper challenge is to align people with themselves
People pulled between achieving what they care about most & meeting short-term goals
How do we help people make an explicit choice in favour of what they most profoundly want?
1) Payoffs to existing system
2) Compare case for change vs case for status quo
3) Create both/and solutions - Make a trade off
Support people to let go by weakening case for status quo, then strengthening case for change
Systems mapping etc should naturally weaken case for status quo
Strengthening case for change
2) Active
Envision ideal future that profoundly calls to people
Guidelines for Visioning
Separate from what you want from what you think is possible
Focus on what you want vs don't want
Focus on results instead of process
Include consequences you want
See/Experience the vision in the present
1) Receptive
Support people to stop & listen to what calls to them most authentically
"Presencing"
Asking "What is being called of us?", rather than "What do we want to create?"
Being eco-centred rather than ego-centred
If still not aligned?
May still not be on common ground
Not everyone needs to agrees at once
Everett Rogers
15% who comprise innovators and early adopters can build sufficient momentum for others to follow
Study on diffusion of innovations showed attitudes shift progressively through population
Collaborate indirectly
Work around people you cannot work with
Work against them through channels such as advocacy, legislation, non-violent resistance
Bridging the Gap
Identify high leverage interventions
Donella Meadows
Increasing order of effectiveness
12) Constants, parameters, numbers
11) Size of buffers, relative to flows
10) Structure of material stocks & flows (fluctuations, bottlenecks, etc)
9) Length of delays, relative to rate of system changes
8) Strength of negative feedback loops relative to effect they are trying to correct
7) Gain driving positive feedback loops
6) Structure of information flow
5) Rules of the system (incentives, punishment, consttraints)
4) Power to add, change, evolve or self-organise
3) Goal of the system
2) Mindset or paradigm that the system arises from
1) Power to transcend paradigms
Rewire Cause-effect relationships
Shift Mental Models
Mental models govern the cause-effect relationships
1) Surface and respect current beliefs
2) Ask, "Do these Mental Models help us achieve what we want now?"
3) Stimulate alternative views
4) Develop vision of what we want now & the mental models that would support it
5) Conduct & learn from experiments
Substitute utility for validity
More productive to ask people if their current beliefs are useful or not
Reinforce the purpose